Barack Obama faces mid-term humiliation after Senate exodus

President Barack Obama is facing humiliation in this year's mid-term elections after a wave of desertions by Democratic senators who have retreated from tough challenges for their seats from a resurgent Republican party.

Making his point: US President Barack Obama at a White House press conference last weekPhoto: Rex Features

By Alex Spillius in Washington

7:51PM GMT 16 Feb 2010

There was speculation on Tuesday that the next to join an exodus ahead of the November elections could be Blanche Lincoln, who represents the conservative southern state of Arkansas and is behind every putative Republican challenger in opinon polls.

The Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, is meanwhile trailing all his potential Republican opponents in his state of Nevada, and even Mr Obama's old Senate seat in Illinois is expected to be close run.

The White House was rocked on Monday by the announcement by Evan Bayh, a popular, centrist senator from Indiana, who became the fifth senator to confirm he will not run for re-election. The latest speculation of more senators coming forward will only add to President Obama's woes and raise the prospect his party could lose its majority in Congress.

The emerging consensus in Washington is now that the Democrats have only a 50-50 chance of keeping control of the Senate, where they currently hold 59 out of the 100 seats, in what would be a stunning reversal of fortune after the party's clean sweep in 2008.

It has already lost the 60-strong majority that automatically overrode procedural blocks, after little known Republican Scott Brown last month captured a Massachusetts seat held by the late Edward Kennedy for 47 years.

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Other Democrats are expected to withdraw from fray before deadlines fall for standing in the midterms, when 33 Senate seats and all 435 House of Representative seats will be contested.

The ruling party's vulnerability was further underlined on Tuesday when Frank Lautenberg, the 86-year-old senator for New Jersey, collapsed at his home and was hospitalised for the treatment of an ulcer.News of his collapse served as a reminder of the frail health of other senators, such as Robert Byrd, at 92 the oldest and longest serving member of the Senate, and Arlen Specter, an 80-year-old cancer and brain tumour survivor who faces a gruelling re-election battle in Pennsylvania.

Mr Bayh blamed his departure on a deep disillusion with the partisan gridlock in the Senate that he said failed to put nation over party.

Other Democrats have simply lacked the stomach for the fight, amid public upset over job losses, spiraling federal deficits and spending, huge bonuses awarded to executives of bailed-out financial institutions and Washington's yearlong and so far fruitless pre-occupation with health care.

Senator Byron Dorgan has announced he will run again in North Dakota – where Democrats have yet to find a replacement candidate - while the party failed to recruit its top candidate in Delaware when Vice President Joe Biden's son Beau eschewed a run for the seat long held by his father.

Democrats have a 255-178 edge in the House of Representatives, but more retirements are expected among 49 Democrats from districts, mainly in the South, that supported Republican presidential candidate John McCain in 2008.

"It hasn't been a lot of fun for centrist Democrats," said John Feehery, a Republican strategist. "They get a lot of heat back in their states on spending and health care and you have to be a true believer in the president's agenda to stick this out and a lot of them are not true believers. To put your family through the stress of another campaign if you don't have the fire in your belly is a big deal."